#AndrásRiedlmayer

[harvardfineartslib]

Middle East Medievalists (MEM,) an association of scholars promoting the study of medieval Middle East awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award to our former colleague, András Riedlmayer for his service as librarian and archivist at Harvard and his work cataloging crimes against cultural heritage in the Balkans, including testifying in international war crimes tribunals against Slobodan Milošević. We are so proud of András!

For those of you who are not familiar with András lifework on documenting crimes against cultural heritage in the Balkans, you can listen to the interview on Ottoman History Podcast. https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/03/balkan-waqf.html

The destruction of Ottoman-era waqf institutions and other cultural heritage in the Balkans during the wars of the 1990s was extensive, from masjids and tekkes to bridges and libraries. A bibliographer at Harvard's Fine Arts Library, András Riedlmayer, traveled throughout the region to document this destruction during and after the wars. In this podcast, Riedlmayer describes his work on waqf institutions in the Balkans and his testimonies about the destruction of culture for international war tribunals over the last two decades. We discuss the fate of antiquities during wars and the ethical implications for historians, collectors and museums. (From Ottoman History Podcast: Documenting the Destruction of Balkan Waqf Institutions, Episode 305)

Image 1: András testifying at the International Court of Justice in March, 2006 (Photo courtesy of András Riedlmayer)

Image 2: Carralevë, Kosovo. Inside the burned-out village mosque, October 1999. Torn and desecrated pages from Qur’ans and religious books in the aftermath of the Kosovo war. (Photo courtesy of András Riedlmayer)